John Joseph Mathews was Osage. This was the tribe that many members were murdered for the "head" rights, which gave them oil money. He became a very important person among the Osage and was their spokesperson. He was university educated, University of Oklahoma and Oxford, and served as a pilot in WWI. He became a writer of books. His first, Wah 'kon-tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road (1929) was a best seller. His second book, Sundown (1934) would be his most significant. It explored the effect of the oil boom on the Osage people and looked at the murder of the Osage by those wanting oil money. This book is his only novel. In the 1930s he served two terms on the Osage Nation Tribal Council. He also served on the Oklahoma State Board of Education. He married and had two children by his first wife, however he walked away and had little contact with them.
He built an unusual home on his reservation property and called it The Blackjacks. It was a two room sandstone home with a fireplace in the middle. The home is now part of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and seasonally open to tours. From here he continued writing. His third book was Talking to the Moon (1945) about his life among the Osage. He wrote a biography of a prominent oilman, Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E.W. Marland (1951). He also published a book of stories from the Osage people based on his research with Osage elders, The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters (1961). He remarried a widow and she had two children who he raised with his wife.
In his later life he was working on a three volume autobiography. One volume was publish posthumously, Twenty Thousand Mornings (2012), edited by Susan Kalter. Kalter also edited a group of short stories which was also published, Old Three Toes and other Stories of Survival and Extinction (2015). Mathews passed away in 1979 and at his request was buried in the garden of his home Blackjacks. He was inducted posthumously into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame.
